Danza III: The Series Of Unfortunate Events
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TriKef, on september 21, 2011 1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Sound: Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza's third album "Danza III: The Series Of Unfortunate Events" is crazy, relentless, and at times melodic. Mathcore and just the term "Extreme Metal" best describes the band as each track hits the listener with showers of notes, rapid fire shouts, and heavy, technical drumming. With this, there are those moments of "Wow, this is f***ing crazy!" for the first couple of tracks ("Yippie-Kay-Yay Mother!@#$%^"), but begins to fade away as you realize the band doesn't push too far from that. By the time you get to "The Union" you will have heard the same "epic melodic guitar" chorus three times by that point and if your like me, you are not going to be impressed by it for a fourth time.
Josh Travis is an amazing guitarist and definitely shows it on this album. With tracks like "Vicki Mayhem" and "I Am Sammy Jankis" showing off his 8 string skills (by the way, the tuning is E B E B E F# B E if you are wondering) Josh definitely makes a name for himself as being one of the best guitarist in the mathcore genre today. He also brings a melodic feel to the album at times (too many times I think) which makes Jessie Freeland's shouts even more epic and meaningful. // 8

Lyrics: Jessie Freeland vocal style is more "shout" than "growl" and it helps add to the chaotic feel on this album. As I mention before, his best moments are on tracks like "The Union" and "W.A.L.L.S." where Josh is backing him up with some amazing guitar works. His overall delivery never disappointed me through out the album.
Lyrically, the album deals with personal, global, political, and social "unfortunate events" (stated by the band). To my surprise, there are some pretty impressive lines through out. The chorus in "Yippie-Kay-Yay Mother!@#$%^" is a prime of example of this:
"I'm the industry's undisputed terrorist,
Pushing anarchy, trigger pullin' lyricists.
Terrorist lyricist..."
Lines from "Vicky Mayhem" also help give the listener a sense of the chaos they are trying emulate:
"I see the tanks rolling in already picking spots
Not too much longer until this city's hot"
By the end, I was very impressed by lyrics and how they were executed. // 9

Overall Impression: Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza never really caught my attention until they released this album. The first album to me is still a mess of notes and pathetic screams that I will never touch while "Danza II" is an improvement, but still too chaotic and under produced for my taste. With the "Danza III: The Series Of Unfortunate Events", they hit the sweet spot between chaos and structure only to fall into repetition. After "I Am Sammy Jankis" you won't bother to look at your CD or iPod track list till probably "There's A Time And Place For Everything" and then another time to make sure you aren't listening to "W.A.L.L.S." again.
Overall, this is the right step for the band and hopefully "Danza IV" will be filled with more creative tracks and less filler. // 7

I dont know what the fuss is all about, just sounds like an exercise in extreme chromatics, which is what every math/grind cross bands do. And the whole dickwaving contest of who goes lower on their guitars is pointless.